Be My Baby (tour)

It’s almost axiomatic now that the good ship SS Blighty started sinking bow first into the brine in the late 1960s with the onset of the ‘permissive’ age. Be My Baby serves as a salutary and much-needed reminder of the shame and suffering in times that preceded it.

The play, by Amanda Whittington, takes place over two months in 1964 at St Saviour’s, a church-run mother and baby home in north England which takes in unmarried pregnant mothers and accommodates them until their baby is born and given up for adoption.

As the play opens, Mary (Amy Philips), aged 17 and nine months gone, is about to leave home. From a dansette in her bedroom comes the yearning strains of “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes: at St Saviour’s, the inmates dutifully intone “All Things Bright and Beautiful” at the austere home, artfully evoked by bare walls, minimal fittings and a length of curtain.

Contemporary songs by girl groups and singers intersperse the play, serving both to point up the romantic dreams of the girls and provide an ironic commentary on the reality of their lives, much as Dennis Potter did with songs from the 1940s in Pennies from Heaven.

Also serving as a reality check is Queenie (Kirsty Bushell), aged 20, for whom this is not the first time. “Met a bloke who said I’d got what it takes. Then what I’d got, he took.”

For Mary, the play is a progress from innocence to experience. Her efforts to find employment, as a housekeeper so she can keep her baby, are thwarted by prejudice and to run away, by the reality of her situation. In the end, she can only submit to her fate.

It would be unfair to single out any of the excellent cast of six actresses who perform with assurance and brio. Be My Babyisn’t a play likely to leave you skipping out the theatre. In truth I found it depressing, despite its wit, but it is skilfully written, played and directed (by Abigail Morris).

– Pete Wood (reviewed at the Nottingham Playhouse)